Bogus banks playing the web

SAVERS are being hit by an unprecedented wave of scams by unlicensed internet banks and financial services companies, says Scotland Yard.

Financial Mail has gained exclusive access to a Fraud Squad list of 100 suspect banks and investment companies, many of them with names hijacked from genuine businesses and using respectable addresses. But when the names are combined with the websites they use, the picture is murkier.

Atlantic Credit Nominees claims to be a bank registered in Jersey. But its postcode is a fake, its phone numbers are mobiles, and its website was traced to Lagos, Nigeria. The building pictured on its website is a health clinic in California.

City Express Bank has an impressive website but its address near Trafalgar Square in London does not exist and the business is unknown at Companies House and by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

The National Leicester Bank uses a fake address in Leicester, with a postcode from Liverpool. Its website has been traced to America.

Pan National Bank claims to be in Liverpool Street, in the City, but its claims to be regulated by the Personal Investment Authority are nonsense: the PIA was swallowed up by the FSA.

Some of the suspect sites carry pictures of purported bank bosses. Financial Securities, which claims to be based in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, is part of an international fraud in which victims are told they have won a huge lottery prize, but they must pay fees or taxes up-front.

The prize does not exist, despite the reassurance of the company's 'foreign services manager', Colin Richards, whose picture appears on the website. But the picture is of Professor Norman Gillies OBE, director of a Gaelic language college-on the Isle of Skye. He said: 'I have never heard of this company, and I have certainly never had any connection with it.'

Some businesses have hit back. Bloomberg, the financial information agency, seized a phoney Bloomberg Bank website. HSBC now controls the name of Firstdirectbanking, used in a scam.

And Halifax, which owns the Paramount Bank name in Britain, must hope that the crooks behind the suspect website of the same name do not repeat their recent trick - ripping off Halifax's website complete with Howard from the TV commercials.

Detective Sergeant Colin Holder of the Fraud Squad said: 'There has been a marked increase in fraudulent banks, investment houses and credit institutions appearing on the internet. Anyone entering their personal details is likely to find their identity duplicated. If they transfer money, it will be lost.'

For the full list of fake banks go to www. thisismoney.com and click on Saving and Investing